CoJo in a tizzy over perceived bill "misinterpretation"

By this point during the Planning Together hearing, Corey Johnson had grown very frustrated at how cool, calm and collected Marisa Lago was under fire. You can tell because he jumps in the middle of her answering Adrienne Adams' question and goes on a diatribe. Not once, but twice!

If this bill was so great, it wouldn't be misinterpreted.

It's a bit paternalistic for carpetbagging white men like Corey (Massachusetts) and Brad Lander (Missouri) to be informing everyone else that they know exactly what's in their best interest and it involves a bill they simply must pass in their waning days in the Council while they are campaigning for higher office.

Check out Adams' attitude toward the end as well. Tomorrow, we'll delve further into her unenviable predicament. It involves a tweeding dilemma.

Reynoso doth protest too much

Council Member Antonio Reynoso laced into City Planning Chair Marisa Lago for not supporting the Planning Together legislation but conveniently dismisses his past decisions with regard to land use.

Case in point: He seems to want to expand affordable housing stock, yet famously settled for 8 meager units of affordable housing for an 88-unit project in Ridgewood and then said nothing when the developer pulled a fast one on the affordability.

Furthermore, the land use process starts and ends with the City Council. The council member is lobbied before rezonings ever see the light of day, then they have the final say on whether or not a plan passes into law. So asking the chair of city planning why this horrible process hasn't changed is blue chip deflecting.

This man's chameleon-like behavior and disrespectful demeanor make him unfit to be Brooklyn borough president, which is what his grandstanding is about.

Alpha-male Brad Lander loses his shit during Planning Together hearing

Brad Lander's toxic masculinity was on full display at the Planning Together City Council hearing yesterday as he ranted and raved and laced into City Planning Director Marisa Lago for tesifying against the bill and giving answers to questions that he didn't like.

You will notice that he uses imagery of "the frog in the boiling pot" 8 times and mentions the "toxic land use process" 5 times. This is very well rehearsed phony outrage.

"All that charter revision did was a 30-day email in advance of a planning process..."
As compared to the City Council not notifying anyone prior to the hearing you are participating in?

"There's no way that communities are going to show up with their hands raised and say 'We'd like to do our fair share, let's engage in planning.'"
That's exactly what was done during the Bloomberg years using the current rezoning process - until Bill de Blasio imposed his will and cut the community out of the picture.

"If you're just going to sit here and criticize this proposal..."
Well yeah, it's YOUR legislation that the hearing is about, so everyone is going to testify about its merits.

"I don't get to ask anymore questions, but you can still go ahead and continue."
Then as she is answering, he interrupts and asks more questions.

So we have an overbearing white guy who wants to be Comptroller berating a very polite and professional and distinguished senior Hispanic female. Bad optics, Brad. And here we thought people from the Midwest were respectful. How about instead of running for Comptroller, you go back to St. Louis and mess with their land use?

Lander is so heated and stupid he doesn't even (or refuses to) see the irony while he repeatedly talks about toxic land use process when the zoning he's so desperate to get for his real estate overlords is the superfund site in Gowanus.-JQ LLC

City planning official acknowledges citizens agonizing fears and contemptible disdain for de Blasio's zoning policies, then undermines their concerns in speech to real estate lobby organization

Crains New York

The head of the city's planning agency acknowledged that the mandatory inclusionary housing program—a signature accomplishment of Mayor Bill de Blasio's tenure—has failed to quell the growing concerns New Yorkers have about development pushing people out of their neighborhoods.

"I think we need to speak about [development] in terms that respond to the very concrete fears that people have about displacement," Marisa Lago, director of the Department of City Planning and head of the City Planning Commission, said at an event Thursday.

But Lago said public confidence in the mayor's policy requiring affordable units in projects benefiting from rezoning would grow over time.

"Mandatory inclusionary housing was passed just three years ago," Lago said. "As we see more and more of these units coming online, as we see neighborhoods ... begin to be regenerated, I think the facts will ultimately bear out that we're headed in the right direction."

It's all so convenient

From the NY Post:

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $300,000 debt to his outside law firm is starting to cast a huge shadow over his staff’s decisions.

As The Post reports Tuesday, opponents of plans to expand the Frick Museum have gone to court, claiming in part that the Frick’s use of the firm — Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel — to represent it before the city creates a conflict of interest.

They’re right: Frick hired Kramer Levin to push its plans before the Board of Standards and Appeals and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. But the mayor chooses their members, and they’re all surely aware that he owes the firm 300 grand.

The BSA will also decide Tuesday whether to OK a 64-story East Side apartment tower. Who’s repping its developer, Jonathan Kalikow? Yep: Kramer Levin.

The firm reportedly lobbied two key mayoral aides, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and City Planning Commissioner Marisa Lago, to let the building reach its planned 64-story height — and the planning commission obliged.

The City Council later nixed that decision, but the BSA will now decide whether enough of the tower was built by then to shield it from the council’s action.

Even if de Blasio hasn’t tried to pay off his debt with political favors, his debt creates an appearance that the firm will be treated well by the city. What company lets a client not pay a bill (or even work out a payment plan, as de Blasio has yet to do) unless it’s getting something in return?

Like rats fleeing a sinking ship

From DNA Info:

Within a week of Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration announcing record-breaking achievements in affordable housing, the top two officials responsible for his housing initiatives are stepping down.

Department of City Planning Director and City Planning Commission Chair Carl Weisbrod is stepping down to chair the Trust for Governors Island, and Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Vicki Been will return to her previous job teaching at New York University and directing NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Weisbrod will be replaced by Marisa Lago, currently the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Assistant Secretary for International Markets and Development.

Been will be replaced by Economic Development Corporation president and CEO Maria Torres-Springer, de Blasio announced Tuesday.

James Patchett, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, will succeed Torres-Springer at EDC, an agency which Glen oversees.